Asked on breakfast television Monday whether he really had a hope with one poll showing him behind 46-54 he said there were “multiple state elections in recent times when people have come from behind in the last week and they've come from much further behind than we are”.

Kevin Rudd's claim that there are precedents for governments winning from this far behind are found to be false.

But there was a key difference. It experienced a sustained comeback all through the campaign. One week out from the poll, Labor and the Coalition were 50-50. The trend continued until polling day lifting Labor to 51.4 per cent.

By this time in that campaign Newspoll was 50-50.

What about the state elections Rudd mentioned?

PolitiFact asked Labor's campaign headquarters to name them. It pointed to Anna Bligh's victory in Queensland in 2009, and Mike Rann's triumph in South Australia in 2010.

Bligh was behind 49 to 51 three weeks out from that election, and 49.9 to 50.1 in the final days. At the ballot she ended up with 50.9 per cent.

In South Australia, the Rann government was 50-50 as the campaign began and slipping. A week from the big day it was behind 48-52, which closely previewed the actual result: 48.4 to 51.6. Labor lost the popular vote but kept a majority in the House.

These may well be examples of great victories snatched from the jaws of defeat, but they aren't of the scale Labor needs to turn itself around from where it is today.

Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy says: “There have been turnarounds of five, six or seven points, but normally that takes months rather than days."

And the challenge this time is even greater. Labor isn't defending a majority - it actually needs to win new seats to hold government.

Rod Tiffen, Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, said if it was going to happen the comeback would have started by now.

But Tiffen did suggest an example that Labor's campaign headquarters hadn't - the Victorian election in 1999, which the parliamentary library describes as “one of the most remarkable state elections of the last 50 years".

Jeff Kennett's Liberal government was pipped at the post by Steve Bracks and Labor despite having led the polls for the entire campaign. Both the Age/Nielsen and Herald Sun Quadrant polls published on election eve showed the Coalition ahead 54-46. Labor won the election with 50.12 per cent.

Other polls were closer. The Morgan poll published on election eve had the Coalition ahead only 50.5 to 49.5.

Right now, Labor's best numbers come from Essential Media, which has them behind only 48-52. Every single poll is going in the wrong direction.

Does it stack up?

At PolitiFact, we're not fans of kicking people while they're down. But Kevin Rudd made a bold claim.

Rudd said there were multiple examples of heroic comebacks. We only found one, and it doesn't exactly parallel 2013.

In 1999, Victorian Labor defeated the Coalition from opposition, not from government. There were wildly divergent polls in the lead up. Since then poll methods and accuracy have improved. This year's polling is consistent and moving in the same direction.

Finding

None of the examples cited by Labor or found by PolitiFact show a government coming from behind by as much as he needs in the final week.

A PolitiFact rating of "false" applies where a statement is not accurate.

Fairfax is partnering with the Pulitzer-prize winning service PolitiFact during the election campaign. Its Australian arm politifact.com.au uses the same rigorous methodology as its US parent to rate the accuracy of claims by elected officials and other influential people in the Australian political debate.